Still Open [Narrated]

Three years ago, I was still settling into my new life in St. Petersburg, Florida. My condo was full of unpacked boxes, and most mornings that summer, I was out before dawn, walking Wolfie around the lake near our new home—trying to get my bearings in more ways than one.

That morning, a poem arrived. I didn’t set out to write it. It just... surfaced.
It was called Open, and it captured everything I was carrying—emotionally, spiritually, even the weight of beginning again. After years of staying still—out of caution, out of habit—I was finally ready to move. To change. To trust again.

For this week’s Flashback Friday, I’m returning to that poem—not just to remember what I was reaching for, but to reflect on what’s taken root since, what’s shifted, and how that quiet morning by the lake still echoes through the life I’m living now.

Still Open

There’s a softness to arrival that you only recognize in hindsight.

When I first moved to Florida, I wasn’t trying to be poetic—I was just trying to breathe.
The years since my marriage ended had been a holding pattern. Familiar. Quiet. Airless.
For a while, I convinced myself that doing nothing was safety. But it was also a kind of grief.
And then, one morning, something shifted. I didn’t just want change—I craved it.

Not frantically, but with an urgency that felt honest.
A longing to let life expand again—if I could move toward it without fear.

I wrote this poem that morning—sitting by the lake with Wolfie, letting the day break over us. I didn’t have a five-year plan. I just had the desire to trust again—to stop protecting myself from possibility.

Open

Starting anew
I seek out age-old truths
Stripped down and pared back
We are ready for each other

Free to wander
I search for new rituals
Cornerstones
to build a new life upon

Rejecting complacency
Renouncing convention
Embracing my ability to choose
I choose joy and wonder

Shifting and flowing
I feel agile yet grounded
My new life calls me
And I am open

Looking back now, I don’t see naïveté in those lines—I see courage.
That version of me didn’t know exactly what he was reaching for, but he reached anyway.
He didn’t need certainty. He needed to trust again.

That trust cracked something open—and began to change the shape of everything.

Since then, I’ve done more than unpack boxes.
I’ve unpacked long-held wounds. Let go of stories that no longer serve me.
Reconnected with the parts of myself I used to quiet for the sake of harmony.

That slow unburdening made space for something steadier: my North Star.
Not a list of ideals, but a living set of values I return to when life feels unclear. A quiet commitment to choose:

• Clarity over chaos

• Presence over performance

• Mutuality over martyrdom

• And love that liberates, not contains

Back then, I was open because I needed something to find me.
Now, I’m open because I know who I am—and how I want to move through the world.

If I could speak to that man standing lakeside—barely resettled, uncertain but willing—I’d thank him.

For his courage.
For not mistaking stillness for safety.
For trusting that something better could meet him if he stayed open just a little longer.

He couldn’t see the whole path.
But he didn’t need to.

He had the direction right.

Still open. Just not unmoored.